A senior US official says Iraqi forces backed by the USA -led coalition have retaken half the territory the Islamic State group once held in the country.
Advertisement
Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, who is in charge of the US military’s air operations in the coalition, said that the elimination of the Iraq factory Monday had removed a “significant chemical threat” to civilians.
“This represents just another example of Daesh blatant disregard for global law and norms”, he told Pentagon reporters in a video call.
12 U.S. warplanes were involved in a massive bombing campaign on Monday which led to the destruction of a major pharmaceutical factory inside the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
The Pentagon provided video of the strike, showing a series of large, flat-roofed buildings disintegrating under multiple explosions.
The Pentagon says the suspicion is that the factory was taken over by ISIS and converted “into a chemical weapons production facility” that was also being used as an ISIS base inside Mosul, the largest city in ISIS controlled territory.
ISIS quickly overran Iraqi forces guarding Mosul in June 2014, and it was the location where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the creation of an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria. “This is why it’s so important to cut off the various transportation routes and smuggling routes that they have used”, he said.
Advertisement
“We are now in a position where ISIL here in Iraq is increasingly on the run and on the ropes, and the urgent work ahead is to complete that effort”.
